So this morning for Cold Start I wrote about this old Volkswagen salesperson’s guide, and noted in that guide the ignition warning buzzer was mentioned multiple times as being “annoying.” Significantly, the writers of that 55-year-old guide were not wrong. At all. But it wasn’t just Volkswagen; pretty much every buzzer – ignition, seat belt, you left your lights on – installed in cars before, oh, 1990, was a grating auditory nightmare.
Today, modern cars have a wide variety of chimes and dings and beeps, and while some modern cars tend to go a little overboard with the beeping (ahem, Prius Prime) they’re generally all vastly better than how things used to be back in the Age of Awful Buzzers.
Don’t believe me? Listen to this shit – first, here’s the specific VW one that started me thinking about all this:
Oh man, that brings back some memories; painful memories of being aurally assaulted with that late-Victorian electric chair sound, and the slightly better memory of pulling that little silver noise-cube out of its socket, forever.
But all of these little mechanical buzzers were pretty awful: here’s one from a Chevy Nova:
Awful, just awful. And these weren’t improved even when slightly muffled behind layers of rattly dashboard plastics; if anything, the resonance of all those haphazardly-screwed-together dash bits just made it all worse.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a great example, in a video titled “The World’s Most Annoying Key Buzzer: 1970 Cutlass Supreme”:
Oh jeezis, that’s fucking miserable. These awful sounds trigger all sorts of childhood trauma memories of growing up in a world where every motherclutching car I clambered into as a child spent the first 30 seconds or more of its precious life after starting bleating out horrific sounds like these.
Here, listen to this Chevelle one:
What kinds of sounds were they subjecting themselves to across the pond, you may be wondering? Well I hope the plaintive wail of this Triumph Spitfire answers your question!
What baffles me about this one featuring a ’77 Camaro buzzer is that it seems whoever made this wanted to get it working again, and somehow gives a thumbs up to that hideous noise? The fuck is wrong with you, dude?
It’s like this guy with his Firebird, going through all this effort so he can, what, listen to this?
I just think we should all take a little moment and say some sort of automotive prayer of gratitude to whatever automotive higher powers you believe in that these loathsome and grating pain-wailers are no longer a thing. Since the 2000s, automakers have embraced chimes, which aren’t exactly not annoying. Here’s a sampling of Ford F-150 ignition chimes from the past decade or so as a reminder:
Not exactly Billboard Hot 100 material, but they’re so so so very much better than what came before. The difference in annoyance level is like accidentally sitting on a moist hand-wipe versus accidentally sitting in a puddle of stale urine. You don’t really want to do either, but there’s one that you want to do vastly less.
Gratitude is a good thing. I’m letting those gracious feelings wash over me as I revel in knowing that putting a key into a car ignition (well, even that act is now quite uncommon) isn’t rewarded with the sounds of the screams of a rare male banshee getting its scrotum pinched in a clothes dryer door and broadcast at amplified volume through an air-raid siren speaker.
Life isn’t perfect, but in some small ways, it’s getting better.
This Old Tatra 603 Promo Film Is Gleefully Bonkers
The Maserati Quattroporte May Be The Only Car With This Peculiar Feature And I Can’t Decide If It’s Good Or Bad
This Car Parts Site Is A Dazzling Example Of The Madness Of AI But It’s Kinda Fun
I’m actually nostalgic for shitty old buzzers. My dad’s old Chevy van had one and I drove an Econoline that had a buzzer too. idk maybe I’m weird
The ignition buzzers in our 1st-gen Mitsubishi Monteros enraged me. As soon as I figured out how to get at them, I pulled them out and mashed them flat with a hammer.
I loved ’em. I made a goodly amount of coin disabling them for folks who struggled to plug in a toaster. Later, when more systems were integrated but those damned relay-buzzers still ruled, just unplugging it would disable something you might want. I had to open the can and bend the top contact of the buzzer to disable buzzing.
Now my rigs beep and ding at me, which I find no less annoying. What’s worse, finding and disabling the noises has largely gone beyond my skill set.
How about the Nissan Leaf with its three different start up sound choices? The default is reminiscent of that Brian Eno Windows start up sound.
The F150 chimes may be less annoying, but they’re also far more numerous. You get a few warnings to clear just normally getting in the car and starting it, then hooking up a trailer adds 3 or 4 more. If something actually goes wrong I almost certainly won’t notice it because I was busy clearing half a dozen pointless warnings and reminders.
Yeah, why have a horrible screech when you could have Africa?
https://youtu.be/pZ301QEoo9Y
Suddenly the buzzer is the best option..